Pangloss

Pangloss, who returns in chapter four of Voltaire's Candide, is constantly reasurring his surrounding audience that "private misfortunes contribute to the general good, so that hte more private misfortuens there are, the more we find that all is well" (31). Even when he seems to be dying of AIDS or small pox, which ever disease is interpreted from his long speech, he still has his theory that everything happens because everything is for the best. After a great storm wrecks a city, he still states that things could not be otherwise, "For all this...is a manifestation of the rightness of things, since if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could not be anywhere else. For it is impossible for things not to be where they are, because everything is for the best" (35).

Here I believe the author is targeting those optimistic people - the viewers of the cup half full - who always say things like "everything happens for a reason" or "it is for the best". However, Pangloss seems pretty much over the top optimistic, I think he is the 'absurd' part of the satire. He seems to have his head high in the clouds, and is not really paying attention to what is going on. When Candide is lying in the streets in agony, he is stating that "This earthquake is nothing new...the town of Lima in America experienced the same shocks last year. The same causes produced the same effects. There is certainly a vein of sulphur running under the earth from Liman to Lisbon" (34). And poor Candide upon hearing this wise piece of information replies kindly and respectively "Nothing is more likely...but oil and wine, for pity's sake!" (34).